Management team shoulder the blame

Dave Bassett has said that Dennis Wise and himself must accept their share of the blame for the defeat against Doncaster on Saturday.

You could argue that as they select the players, formations, tactics and tactical changes (or not) they should rightly shoulder some of the blame (not that the players should ever get off scot-free), but the blame that Bassett is saying they will shoulder is the fact that they didn't make things clear enough, as he feels that had the players had a clearer understanding of things, and how they should have been set out then maybe Doncaster's winning goal from the free kick might not have happened, but he also admitted that Doncaster did deserve to win.

Bassett said: "Dennis and I take some responsibility because we had seen Doncaster before and we ended up with one less player in the wall than we needed.

"Maybe we should have made it clearer to the players, but to be fair, Doncaster deserved to win the game. They had more shots on target and more efforts on goal than we did.

"They came out of the blocks very quickly and were definitely up for it. We recovered early in the second half but fell away and in the last part of the game I couldn't see us getting a goal."

Bassett conceded that the Leeds players were not at their best, but reminded people that Leeds are still 5th (despite the 15 point deduction) and still very much in touching distance of top spot let alone the play offs, he added: "A few of our players were below par. We knew the second half of the season would be harder for us that the first. But we are still in sixth position and haven't given up chasing top spot."